


Don't Say Goodbye, Don't Leave Me

by jojothecr



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Season 3, Wincest - Freeform, Written in 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojothecr/pseuds/jojothecr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Fresh Blood</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Say Goodbye, Don't Leave Me

“You should know how to fix it,” Dean says, calmly and tonelessly, like he’s talking about the weather. Like he’s just wondering whether the clouds that are gathering to the south will bring a storm, or just a mild shower. “You’re gonna need to know these things for the future.”

Sam is convinced he’s been just punched into the guts, or slapped, really hard, nastily and unexpectedly, although he knows that either would have hurt him less. He draws in a shaky breath, not for the first time feeling like the ground has been ripped from underneath his feet, and now he’s falling, without any life line, without knowing where.

But it’s no earthquake that has made his world quiver. It’s the one who stands in front of him, holding a socket wrench, and looking all nonchalant and innocent, like he doesn’t realize the weight of what he’s said not even a minute ago. Just when Sam has started to believe that he finally understands.

It’s the truth in Dean’s words. The resignation, the awareness of the unavoidable, reflected in his eyes. How he struggles to keep going, to remain standing. How he endeavours to keep up the disguise of his untouchability, the high walls he’s built around himself, hiding fear. Stashing the terror of the inescapable fall into the endless naught that goes far beyond what Sam is able to imagine. What his dreams, dreadful nightmares, bring in vivid motion pictures, replaying a terrifying painting of a puzzle put together of the horror films he’s seen, books he’s read, and legends he’s heard. None of which is even close to what’s really gonna happen to his brother when they lose this battle, this war Dean considers as already lost.

Maybe it’s just easier for Dean this way. Maybe it’s simpler to give it up, accepting that there’s no way out of it, than nursing a tiny, desperate tremor of hope and longing, praying for a miracle that is not going to happen, because it’s Dean. Because they’re Winchesters, and are, seemingly, cursed to the fourth generation.

It’s like he’s convinced that his life isn’t worth mentioning, let alone saving. Like he’s actually running towards the last chapter of his life, to his own ending, although he’s always been a fighter. Battling to the very end, even when he knew he couldn’t win, when it was clear he already lost. Always fighting. Until now.

It isn’t easier for Sam though. For him Dean’s spurious composure is only more painful, because he can see right through it so well, and he hates Dean for underestimating the significance of their past and Sam’s memories of him.

 

He takes the tool from Dean, holding his gaze, steadily and casually, and yet wanting to yell. He can practically feel the shout building deep inside of him, crawling slowly higher and filling his veins with desperation and anger. And he wants to let it all out, scream out his lungs and his pain, and make Dean feel it too.

“You know what, Dean? Fuck you!” he snaps as he throws the socket wrench to the ground, starting even though he was expecting the dull noise to echo on the concrete, and smirks coldly at the dismayed expression on Dean’s face. “Fuck you, and your fucking suicidal nature and superior attitude!” He thrusts at Dean’s chest, hard, making him falter a few steps backwards and open his mouth on a voiceless, yet very angry and nasty curse. “Fuck your low self-esteem and twisted sense of loyalty, because I don’t know how to deal with that anymore!”

“Sam--” Dean gasps, desperately trying to get his bearings back, yet being knocked off his balance over and over by Sam’s strong punches that shove him back against the car.

“Don’t,” Sam hisses, shoving him once again.

The back of Dean’s knees collide with the black metal of the open trunk behind him and give way one second later, so Dean sits down onto the front of his beloved car before he can bang his head against the metal above. He stands up immediately, but Sam’s hand spread across his chest pushes him back down seconds later.

Sam rests his hand on the edge of the car beside Dean’s thigh and leans in, staring into Dean’s baffled eyes, and evilly enjoying the edge of panic he can see flashing there among the green, and the panic-stricken pounding of Dean’s heart, which he can feel thumping underneath his palm.

“Just shut up,” he commands darkly.

His tone is more a plea than an order, but Dean doesn’t seem to want to follow either. He struggles to stand up and get out of there, out of the Sam-made prison, but it’s a completely pointless effort, because Sam is stronger, and as solid as a brick wall. He grabs handfuls of Dean’s shirt and seizes his shoulders, clutching them tightly and burying his fingers into the plaid and deeper; deep enough to bruise and leave marks, keeping Dean just where he wants him to be.

“Sa--” Dean tries again, writhing about, but Sam doesn’t even let him finish.

“Just shut the fuck up already,” he whispers desperately. His voice trembles, losing its sting but not its urgency, as the words linger and then die on Dean’s lips.

Dean freezes with the touch instantly, and his beer slips from his loosened fingers. Following the laws of gravity, the bottle hits the ground and bursts into tons of brown splinters, splashing their jeans with the cold liquid and leaving a fetid tarnish on the concrete. Dean shivers then and growls, almost like a werewolf, spitting another curse right into Sam’s mouth. But Sam’s fingers only close around the well defined line of Dean’s jaw and tip his head to the side slightly for a better access. His tongue jostles in between Dean’s slightly parted lips, opening them further and seeking Dean’s tongue, and Dean jerks as though an electric jolt rushed through him. His hands fly up, grabbing blindly for any part of Sam he can reach to stop and push him away, and ends up digging his blunt fingernails into Sam’s forearm, leaving faint bloody traces in his wake.

Sam doesn’t allow him to slip out of his grasp though; he hangs onto him, holding him still and in place. His teeth scrape Dean’s lower lip, drawing an indignant, warning _whoosh_ out of him, and Sam can feel thin droplets of blood dripping on his tongue. It’s a different flavor than he remembers, but underneath the uninviting layer of copper lies the same sweet and dangerous taste of Dean he recalls from before. From that one summer, almost seven years ago.

 

 _It was a long, endless summer-time. Clear skies and heated July nights spent on the creaky porch of the partially dilapidated house. A long uninhabited outhouse, in the middle of nowhere, ringed by unmanaged fields of wheat, and overgrown with Flanders poppies._

 _A place where Dean could heal his injuries and rest, and Sam was supposed to study Latin and ancient spells unmolested, a task for which he didn’t have time during the school year._

 _A place where nothing could have gone wrong. And where everything had._

 _Scorching heat and only Dean for company, which wouldn’t have been that bad, if not for the strange, indescribable tension that had started developing between them._

 _It had begun slinking in unobtrusively. Random touches that broke into purposeful, aimed. Lingering stares that were only increasing in their frequency. Awkward silences that were becoming so loud they were both convinced they were getting deaf._

 _Drinking beer to the orchestra of the nearby forest and frog songs from the large lake, or Dad’s old cassette tapes, played in the beaten up cassette player Dean had found under a layer of dust, in what had used to be a children’s room. Watching shooting-stars and locating long forgotten constellations, and remembering the legends tied to each one of them. The proximity of no one but each other had opened gates of something unexpected. Of something that they had both always felt, but had been too scared to touch, give into, and face the feelings poured out of it._

 _Dean was fighting, tough, so much harder than Sam, because he was the older one. The one who was supposed to stop it, listen to reason, and cut it before it could get any farther away from them, too far. But Sam was either too convincing and unflinching, his stolen touches and kisses too tempting, and hitting just the right places, or Dean was simply too weak, too deep in what he tried to pretend he didn’t want, didn’t need, that he gave up.  
By the beginning of September there was no onward barrier in between them left to break._

 _The next summer Sam took off, and they both began to pretend that they didn’t remember. It was something they put behind, denied. Pushed so far away, into the darkest corners of their minds, that it became nothing more than a feeble memory. The most fleeting dream that comes to mind when the dawning thickens._

 

Sam draws back after a moment, just when he feels Dean relax and return the kiss, uncertainly, tentatively, like he’s remembering too, but is still struggling to deny his feelings. To deny their memories. There are tears stinging Sam’s eyes, raising an impermeable veil in between them, so he can barely see Dean looking back at him, virtually breathless and thunderstruck. His eyes are open, wide and dark, as they slide over Sam’s face, as though he’s not recognizing the man in front of him, or like he’s surprised to see what he hasn’t glimpsed for so long. There’s a thick drop of ruby hovering on the margin of his bottom lip, glistening and fluttering accusingly up at Sam as Dean’s lips tremble. The tears seep into Sam’s voice, make it sound hoarse, weak and cracked, as he speaks up again, tainting his following words with nothing but poorly hidden pain.

“And fuck your philosophy of ‘I couldn’t care less’, because _I_ do care! And if you can’t find one reason to stay, to try and fight, then look at me. Because I didn’t forget. I tried, I did. But I still feel it... I know I ran away, left you with dad and the burden he’d dropped on us, but... it was never you I was running from.” Sam sighs and loosens his vice-like grip on Dean’s shirt, then wipes the blood off Dean’s lip with the pad of his thumb. “I understand why you did it... Hell, we both know I’d have done the same, but try to understand that I can’t let you go either.”

Dean says nothing, barely blinks, too stunned to manage a word. Sam takes a step back and nods, pleased with himself, and the adorable picture of confusion and surprise he’s drawn on Dean’s face, put into his eyes, and maybe, just maybe, on his mind, so he’ll finally start thinking. And more than satisfied that Dean is finally quiet. He draws back and picks up his beer again, intending to leave the car in Dean’s hands, because that’s where she’s safe, and where she belongs. But Dean’s long fingers wrapped around his wrist stop him in the middle of a step. Frowning, Sam turns back to look at Dean, who tightens his grip on Sam’s hand and stands up.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, as he looks up from their connected hands at Sam with the big green eyes of his, trimmed with long, dark blond eyelashes, and sad. Soft. And guilty. His voice is barely audible, but all the more honest, like he really means it. Like, in despite of everything he had said before, he’s only now realized how much his decision and the deal touched Sam and his life.

Sam sets his bottle down one more time, and shoves his finger into the loop of Dean’s jeans, tugging the shorter man closer to himself. He leans his forehead against Dean’s, squinting down at him.

“Just let me try,” he invokes, as Dean releases his grip on Sam’s wrist and splays his fingers over Sam’s upper arm. Sam’s hands slide lower and clasp Dean’s narrow hips, pressing their bodies firmly together, to feel him, to assure himself that Dean’s still there, still breathing. “Maybe we’ll lose, maybe we won’t. But I have to try. You have to let me try. You have to... I need to try.”

Dean nods, once, and then he presses his lips on Sam’s, sealing a deal.

It’s a gentle kiss this time, slow and remembering, tasting of want and love that had seemed to be forgotten.


End file.
